Will we ever see a monster like the 360 in 2005 ever again?

360 wasn't what you remember

Regardless, the answer is no

In 2005 PCs cried at the sight of 360s power

Heck PC barely got dual core cpus back then

Not to talk about unified shaders in 2005....

lolno

360 was beast mode.

I don't think it'll happen again though. I don't think any of the hardware makers want to take a loss on hardware again, and 3rd party desires for homogeneous hardware led to the PS4 and Xbone essentially having PC parts in them. I think the trend will just be for Sony and MS to make low-end PC hardware from here on out.

The 7800 GTX was out in 2005. It destroyed the 360.

The 8800GTX with unified shaders came out less then 12 months after 360 did and wrecked it..... So no idea what planet you were on at the time as PC's surpassed its power quickly and never looked back.

This is what I find so funny...people keep complaining that the new consoles are so under powered and struggle with 1080p and then talk about the golden age of the 360. PCs were just as far ahead back then

Consoles are what they are, cheap, easy, and depending on the game a lot of fun...why are we always comparing apples and oranges

Beast mode? the 360 had weak hardware...its thrived on good games

should be a lesson for everyone.

before the fps and resolution we should be talking about the GAME

We will never see another 360 ever again. MS didn't learn a Goddamn thing what made MS a superstar in the first damn place! When the Xbox One reveal, MS did NOT learn anything from it's little brother's 360 successful life and it shows. Everyone expected the One to be the One but nope, this was proof that we will never see another 360, ever!

And as for PC, PC was at it's worst states last-gen but now, PC is growing and becoming popular ever before thinks to this sluggish gen were in now.

Sure, when graphics card manufacturers decide that the top price range for new cards is $500 again..

I was crying with PS3 specs rather than 360s to be honest. PS3 on papers was way and beyond with extreme technologies for its era. 7+1 cores as CPU ? XDR ? Blu-Ray ? 360 was great yeah on release and all but not that monsterous as you want it to be. The real monster for its era was PS3 but it didnt work , in fact all this concept backfired and was a lesson to SONY and all others.

Well, technically Gears 1 and GRAW were the best looking games out at the time. Until Crysis came along that is.

I didn't think it was all that great.

It really was astonishing how PC's back then couldn't match a $300 console to run games at 1080p natively (not upscaled from 720 or 640), with only low detail assets, and struggling to surpass 30 fps....

Oh wait, sorry, is this thread about fabricating anecdotal evidence to rationalize a delusional narrative?? No? In that case let's get back to reality here. If TC is actually suggesting that PC's (even at the time) fell behind the X360, then you clearly have no clue what PC tech was capable of back in 2005, or any period relative to a new console release.

Seriously this is a ludicrous topic, based on nothing more than an uninformed nostalgic perspective. Not even sure there is a reason to leave it open.

Pretty much. Lock this troll shit.

Teh Cell destroyed the 360 singlehandedly. Nobody remembers that console anymore

But consoles couldn't outdo PC tech since late 90s.

Well said, well said.

As for the op's question, I don't think Scorpio will challenge high end PCs but it will probably be cheaper than a PC with comparable ability, at the high mid-tier range. I doubt it will be sold at a high profit with the PS4 Pro being only 100 dollars more expensive than the regular model and coming out a year earlier.

@undefined: how did Oblivion "demolish" pcs when it released?

Has the OP abandoned the thread?

I don't think many 360s even survived 2005 lol

compared to PC? nope.. PC will always be a few steps ahead

Next year we’ll see a huge leap in PC GPU performance and power, possibly 10-core CPUs

The tech is advancing at insane levels..

@True_Gamer_: The 360 never made the PC cry. The 360 was hampered by bad porting due to a processor that required multithredding and an extremely limited amount of RAM.

HDR and AA at same time? Nope?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1996/4

Great for productivity. Worthless for gaming.

A lot of you guys are clueless about gaming.

When the 360 launched, no game looked as good as Perfect Dark Zero, Gears of War, or Project Gotham Racing on PC.

I'd know, I was PC gaming in that time period (had a top of the line rig) and it wasn't until 2007 (Crysis and World In Conflict) that PC started outdoing the console graphically.

The Quad cores released for PC in 2006 and the 8800 GTX did as well but just because you have the hardware doesn't mean the games were there to use it. Yeah the PC had stronger hardware but the games that used it came a year later (2007). This is me speaking from experience and having all the tech at my disposal, Core 2 Quad (first intel quad core), 7800/8800 GTX, and a 360/PS3 to compare them to.

360 had something called exclusives and those were definitely ahead of what PC games were looking like for the first 2 years.

PCs were using dual cores when 360 launched, the 360 and PS3 were powerhouses sold at a loss and it probably won't happen again.

@True_Gamer_: I don't know what you're talking about - the PC version looked better, you simply needed better hardware, which is always the case with these topics

Gears of War was the best looking of the bunch and it was on PC.

Didn't F.E.A.R. look better than Perfect Dark Zero?

It might be hyperbolic, but for a PC to beat the 360's performance was quite expensive back then. The 7800gtx was a $600 card at launch that people were sticking into $1500 PCs, and Oblivion couldn't be maxed out on one. Let alone, most people were still rocking 1280x1024 monitors back then too. It was gross.

Really, it was only the 8800 series that could have gotten you through all of last generation, and even that was an expensive card.

With this current generation, you could have literally bought a $500-$600 PC that was better than the consoles at launch, and would still be better. That's the main difference, and I assume that's what the TC is talking about.

I hope to see the rrod again

Gears of War came to PC in 2007 (a year later) dude, I have the box. It was one of MS first Games for Windows Live pushing games in that time frame.

No way did FEAR look better than PDZ, FEAR looked awesome but PDZ looked truely next gen.

It was using DX10 effects, something that FEAR wasn't using.

The shaders were also a gen ahead.

In fact the graphics card in the 360 was using tech that wasn't used in PC hardware yet as it was a custom GPU. 360 ran on a DX10 enabled modified version of ATi's (AMD now) X1900 XTX.

On the PC side there was no GPU as good as the 360 (tech wise) until the 8800 GTX from Nvidia launched in 2006.

Technically the 8800 GTX blew away the PS360, once that came out and the games were using it is when the graphical gap began (Dat Crysis).

Here here

This one got it

Straight to the point

Perfect dark didnt look next gen, it has a different color and graphical palette than FEAR.

PDZ was not using DX10 effects in 2005, 360's hardware is only DX9 shader model 3 based. In 2005 almost all games were still using shader model 2. So early shader model 3 games looked much better. DX10 is shader model 4.... It took devs over a year to get the 360 hardware figured out and the software to correctly use the hardware. which is how the old gpus like geforce 6/7's were able to compete with it early on.

Again 360 did not run on DX10 hardware only DX9 shader model 3 "ATI has debunked a rumor that Xbox 360 could be upgraded to support DirectX 10 via a patch. "Xbox360 cannot run DX10," an ATI spokesperson told 1up. Currently, Microsoft's console runs an advanced version of DirectX 9, which, according to ATI, features "memory export that can enable DX10-class functionality such as stream-out.""

The 360's gpu was the first marketed gpu that used unified shader architecture which became the standard in gpu design. MS went to ATi and grabbed their prototype architecture for the next generation of gpus to be used in the 360.

@04dcarraher: Gears PC came out 12 months after the 360 version though.

We already have! It's called the Xbox One and its already doing better than the 360!

Great news for gamers!

Well somewhat wrong

The 360 didnt even max out Oblivion it was comparable to a PC with a Geforce 6800GT, and it ran at 1024×600 resolution on the 360... and most people back in 2006 were still using old crt tube TV's so using the 7800GTX at 1280x1024 with max detail looked better than 360's version......

Sorry I was mistaken It was announced on June,11 2007. Ive slept since then lol

Either way, 360s best looking games were ahead of PC until Crysis and World In Conflict in 2007.

Yeah, PC had the better hardware but the software to utilize didn't occur until these two graphical powerhouses came into play.

Did you even PC game back then?

Those better looking games on 360 came out in mid to late 2006, Then multiplats didnt quite beat Pc versions with higher end gpus. Pc didnt have the better gpu hardware than the 360 until Nov 2006, PC had gpus with more brute processing power and more vram. the 360 was in the same boat as PC back then in 2005 into 2006. The software had to catch up the hardware. and the devs had to learn how to use the hardware as well The 360 was ahead of the curve in 2005 with its triple core cpu and first marketed unified shader based gpu, when the rest of the world was still using a single thread and fixed shader and pixel designed gpus. Once games started coming out that were more shader intensive the older fixed based gpus fell behind.

O yes I had a gaming pc back then and was expensive compared to what you could get in 2007 onward.

Xbox 360's GPU size is about 180 mm^2 not including "smart" EDRAM.

Xbox One's GPU size is about 160 mm^2 not including ESRAM.

PS3's GPU size is about 250 mm^2 not including CELL's SPE.

PS4's GPU size is about 212 mm^2.

PS4 Pro's GPU size is about 232 mm^2.

8800 GTX redefined PC's flagship GPU size with 484 mm^2 size.

IBM CELL did not destroy ATI Xenos.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/112770/Xbox_360_PS3_Chip_CoCreator_Talks_Consoles_Relative_Strengths.php

But Gamasutra also asked him about the relative power of the two systems -- since he worked so intimately on them, does he have an opinion on which was the more powerful?

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

"At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models," he concludes.

7800 GTX aged badly .

From https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1460125/

------------------------

"I could go on for pages listing the types of things the spu's are used for to make up for the machines aging gpu, which may be 7 series NVidia but that's basically a tweaked 6 series NVidia for the most part. But I'll just type a few off the top of my head:"

1) Two ppu/vmx units

There are three ppu/vmx units on the 360, and just one on the PS3. So any load on the 360's remaining two ppu/vmx units must be moved to spu.

2) Vertex culling

You can look back a few years at my first post talking about this, but it's common knowledge now that you need to move as much vertex load as possible to spu otherwise it won't keep pace with the 360.

3) Vertex texture sampling

You can texture sample in vertex shaders on 360 just fine, but it's unusably slow on PS3. Most multi platform games simply won't use this feature on 360 to make keeping parity easier, but if a dev does make use of it then you will have no choice but to move all such functionality to spu.

4) Shader patching

Changing variables in shader programs is cake on the 360. Not so on the PS3 because they are embedded into the shader programs. So you have to use spu's to patch your shader programs.

5) Branching

You never want a lot of branching in general, but when you do really need it the 360 handles it fine, PS3 does not. If you are stuck needing branching in shaders then you will want to move all such functionality to spu.

6) Shader inputs

You can pass plenty of inputs to shaders on 360, but do it on PS3 and your game will grind to a halt. You will want to move all such functionality to spu to minimize the amount of inputs needed on the shader programs.

7) MSAA alternatives

Msaa runs full speed on 360 gpu needing just cpu tiling calculations. Msaa on PS3 gpu is very slow. You will want to move msaa to spu as soon as you can.

Post processing

360 is unified architecture meaning post process steps can often be slotted into gpu idle time. This is not as easily doable on PS3, so you will want to move as much post process to spu as possible.

9) Load balancing

360 gpu load balances itself just fine since it's unified. If the load on a given frame shifts to heavy vertex or heavy pixel load then you don't care. Not so on PS3 where such load shifts will cause frame drops. You will want to shift as much load as possible to spu to minimize your peak load on the gpu.

10) Half floats

You can use full floats just fine on the 360 gpu. On the PS3 gpu they cause performance slowdowns. If you really need/have to use shaders with many full floats then you will want to move such functionality over to the spu's.

11) Shader array indexing

You can index into arrays in shaders on the 360 gpu no problem. You can't do that on PS3. If you absolutely need this functionality then you will have to either rework your shaders or move it all to spu.

Etc, etc, etc...

NVIDIA's " The Way It's Meant to be Played" hides short/aging term GPU design. This is the same issue for NVIDIA Kelper.

@ronvalencia:

I know Once games started coming out that were more shader intensive the older fixed based gpus fell behind big time.

indeed the people here claiming ownage are owned themselves , the op is completely right, the x360 was a monster of a system and could only be matched by ridiculous pc's at release.

Of course, pc hardware keeps innovating like it always does and the 8800 gtx did surpass this beast by far by simply doubling the gpu performance but then we were already a year later and there was still that triple core cpu running at 3ghz in the x360, of course it wasn't a x86 but never the less, you needed something to feed that 8800gtx. You could buy an intel core 2 duo extreme version clocked at 2.67 ghz for a whopping 999$ which was just released a month before the 8800 gtx end 2006. You we're looking at 2000$, congrats you beat a X360 end 2006.

It was quite simple, you wanted to match the x360 in its early years, you were paying 1000- 1500$ depending how early in that gen you bought your system. Pretty much a no brainer for any gamer at that time. it was the coup of the consoles that gen and the reason why consoles are so successfull right now.

Look at the review here of the game king kong released at the same time of the x360 release, to match the x360 in quality you needed a ridiculous pc.

and to answer the op, the scorpio will be a beast with that 6tflop gpu but I don't think it will be as powerfull as the x360 was, microsoft isn't going to sell consoles with a loss again, and that is exactly what they did with the x360.

However it was all part of the plan back then, to bring as much pc gamers to the console platform and to push sony of the throne. Now it is just the latter and with the ps4 pro it isn't going to be that hard.

For Crysis 2, X1900 was able to keep up with Xbox 360. The problem was Geforce 7/RSX's 32bit FP compute capability. PCs at that time doesn't have CELL's 6 SPE power to patch the aging GF7 RSX design.

For BF3, PS3's deferred render for lighting pass was done on SPUs not RSX while Xbox 360's version has ATI Xenos processing deferred render for lighting pass.

The X1900XT had enough vertex and and shader processors to match the 360 in any combo of usage. The 360 had 48 unified shader processors allowing a mix of combinations for workloads. the 190XT had 48 shader processors and 8 vertex. While the 7800GTX only had 24 Shader processors and 8 Vertex, reducing its shader performance vs X1900 or 360.

I know the PS3 had to patch the G70 based gpu to allow more shader performance.

The 360 was ahead of the curve when it came out in 2005 with its triple core cpu and unified shader based gpu. however the actual processing power of the triple core cpu in 2006 onward was weak sauce. You could actually get an Intel Quad core QX6700 in late 2006 for 1k. Point is that you didnt need more than an Athlon X2 @2.8 ghz or any C2D to outperform the 360's cpu.

I have to defend the 360 here..

12 months on PC is a hell of allot of time,in fact the 360 came when the 7800GTX was release 2005,and by fall 2006 we already saw the 7900GTX come and go and the 8800GTX arrive.

Not to mention it was $600 dollars the GPU alone,pair it with a dual core which on 2006 were also ultra expensive and you probably had close to $900 dollars just on 2 components,and yes the Core 2 duo was close to $200 cheapest which was 1.8ghz a 2.4ghz version went for $300 the 2.6 for $500+ and the 2.9 for a whooping $999...

The xbox 360 had a triple core 3.2ghz CPU with 6 threads the core 2 duo didn't even had hyperthreading on 2006 it was 2 core 2 threads.

And the first quad core on late 2006 were $1,000 + in quantities of 1,000 that mean if you bought 1,000 units from intel that was the price they give you street price was like $1,200 or more.

The 360 was as low as $299 you simple could not match or come even close to that price on PC on 2005 or 2006,you could find something more powerful but at a great cost.

Not unless Microsoft becomes pretty aggressive in terms of marketing and securing exclusive deals again.

And honestly I think that time is long passed.